Thoughts about summer and what will our children do with more free time?

Our homeschooling year tracks a classical year of academics from Fall to Spring. We've just finished! At the end of each year Janine has the girls take a set of tests so we know how they are doing. Mostly we do this to see if there are any weak spots we don't know about. We mailed in the tests on Thursday and celebrated by having a family dinner at Marie Calendars.

Now summer is here! We plan to take it easier. The girls still need to do math. I'll have them memorize some poems. Janine and I were thinking about having a family book club where each week or two we all read the same book and then talk about it.

There will also be a little traveling. Our older two girls will leave for a church girls camp in a week. Then in August our younger two daughters will travel with their grandparents to visit cousins.

With less directed time our children will have more free time. We're going to try and create an environment where they will be attracted to doing good things, like reading good books and spending time with their friends.

Bob Durtschi sent me a link to a recent column by Rebecca Hagelin. She starts Avoiding the "No Zone" with:

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Let's face it -- if you want to raise moral, healthy kids, you have to learn to say "no" to a lot that the modern culture has to offer.
It's becoming more important than ever for parents to set boundaries on television viewing, gaming and Internet usage. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average teen spends 6 1/2 hours a day consuming media. Add in multi-tasking (i.e., playing a video game while listening to their I-pod), and that figure rises to as much as 8 hours a day.
Now that summer is upon us, it's likely that our youth will gravitate to yet more media out of laziness on their part -- and maybe even mom's or dad's. It's just so much easier to let them fill their time with mind-numbing technology than to set limits on both raunchy content and wasted hours. Energy and fortitude are required to say "no" -- but failing to do so does our kids a grave disservice.
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She goes on to say that it is better to create situations where your children are in positive, healthy environments so they have less chance, and interest, in wasting away their summer. One suggestion she has is making your home a fun place for children. This way the friends of your children will want to come to your house, where you get to set the rules. And a big part of having a fun place, especially for teenagers, is having lots of food. It doesn't have to be just junk food. Rebecca suggests pizza, lasagna and taco bars.

Now that summer is here, maybe we'll have to make another big trip to Costco.


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